The Orb, Concorde 2, Brighton, Fri (From The Argus)
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The Orb, Concorde 2, Brighton, Fri
10:00am Tuesday 6th May 2008 in Music By Chris Sparrow
Alex Paterson, mainstay of The Orb for what seems like a generation, has a great pedigree. He was around at the dawn of ambient house and is a master sampler in the studio.
Little Fluffy Clouds may have been over-played but it summed up the bliss of the early 1990s.
Yet this live performance was disjointed and unfulfilling. The problem with playing chill-out music like this is that in order to come down into a land of dreamy soundscapes you have to have been "up" somewhere in the first place.
After five minutes of samples and knob-twiddling there was a semblance of a beat but the music was soon put to the sword by uninspiring rap-style vocals that were just out of place. We kept on being told to "listen", but sometimes the music simply came to a standstill, and so did we.
The Orb may have started something big, but I left the gig with an unfamiliar amount of energy left over.
